The present embodiments relate to wireless communications systems and, more particularly, to a closed-loop mode of operation for such systems.
Wireless communications have become very prevalent in business, personal, and other applications, and as a result the technology for such communications continues to advance in various areas. One such advancement includes the use of spread spectrum communications, including that of code division multiple access (“CDMA”). In such communications, a user station (e.g., a hand held cellular phone) communicates with a base station, where typically the base station corresponds to a “cell.” Further, CDMA systems are characterized by simultaneous transmission of different data signals over a common channel by assigning each signal a unique code. This unique code is matched with a code of a selected user station within the cell to determine the proper recipient of a data signal. CDMA continues to advance and with such advancement there has brought forth a next generation wideband CDMA (“WCDMA”). WCDMA includes alternative methods of data transfer, one being frequency division duplex (“FDD”) and another being time division duplex (“TDD”).
Due to various factors including the fact that CDMA communications are along a wireless medium, an originally transmitted communication from a base station to a user station may arrive at the user station at multiple and different times. Each different arriving signal that is based on the same original communication is said to have a diversity with respect to other arriving signals originating from the same transmitted communication. Further, various diversity types may occur in CDMA communications, and the CDMA art strives to ultimately receive and identify the originally transmitted data by exploiting the effects on each signal that are caused by the one or more diversities affecting the signal.
One type of CDMA diversity occurs because a transmitted signal from a base station is reflected by objects such as the ground, mountains, buildings, and other things that it contacts. As a result, a same single transmitted communication may arrive at a receiving user station at numerous different times, and assuming that each such arrival is sufficiently separated in time, then each different arriving signal is said to travel along a different channel and arrive as a different “path.” These multiple signals are referred to in the art as multiple paths or multipaths. Several multipaths may eventually arrive at the user station and the channel traveled by each may cause each path to have a different phase, amplitude, and signal-to-noise ratio (“SNR”). Accordingly, for one communication from one base station to one user station, each multipath is originally a replica of the same originally transmitted data, and each path is said to have time diversity relative to other multipath(s) due to the difference in arrival time which causes different (uncorrelated) fading/noise characteristics for each multipath. Although multipaths carry the same user data to the receiver, they may be separately recognized by the receiver based on the timing of arrival of each multipath. More particularly, CDMA communications are modulated using a spreading code which consists of a series of binary pulses, and this code runs at a higher rate than the symbol data rate and determines the actual transmission bandwidth. In the current industry, each piece of CDMA signal transmitted according to this code is said to be a “chip,” where each chip corresponds to an element in the CDMA code. Thus, the chip frequency defines the rate of the CDMA code. Given the use of transmission of the CDMA signal using chips, then multipaths separated in time by more than one of these chips are distinguishable at the receiver because of the low auto-correlations of CDMA codes as known in the art.
In contrast to multipath diversity which is a natural phenomenon, other types of diversity are sometimes designed into CDMA systems in an effort to improve SNR, thereby improving other data accuracy measures (e.g., bit error rate (“BER”), frame error rate (“FER”), and symbol error rate (“SER”)). An example of such a designed diversity scheme is antenna diversity and is introduced here since it pertains to the communication methodology used in the preferred embodiments discussed later. Looking first in general to antenna diversity, which is sometimes referred to as antenna array diversity, such diversity describes a wireless system using more than one antenna by a same station. Antenna diversity often proves useful because fading is independent across different antennas. Further, the notion of a station using multiple antennas is often associated with a base station using multiple antennas to receive signals transmitted from a single-antenna mobile user station, although more recently systems have been proposed for a base station using multiple antennas to transmit signals transmitted to a single-antenna mobile station. The present embodiments relate more readily to the case of a base station using multiple transmit antennas and, thus, this particular instance is further explored below.
The approach of using more than one transmit antenna at the base station is termed transmit antenna diversity. As an example in the field of mobile communications, a base station transmitter is equipped with two antennas for transmitting to a single-antenna mobile station. The use of multiple antennas at the base station for transmitting has been viewed as favorable over using multiple antennas at the mobile station because typically the mobile station is in the form of a hand-held or comparable device, and it is desirable for such a device to have lower power and processing requirements as compared to those at the base station. Thus, the reduced resources of the mobile station are less supportive of multiple antennas, whereas the relatively high-powered base station more readily lends itself to antenna diversity. In any event, transmit antenna diversity also provides a form of diversity from which SNR may be improved over single antenna communications by separately processing and combining the diverse signals for greater data accuracy at the receiver. Also in connection with transmit antenna diversity and to further contrast it with multipath diversity described above, note that the multiple transmit antennas at a single station are typically within several meters (e.g., three to four meters) of one another, and this spatial relationship is also sometimes referred to as providing spatial diversity. Given the spatial diversity distance, the same signal transmitted by each antenna will arrive at a destination (assuming no other diversity) at respective times that relate to the distance between the transmitting antennas. However, the difference between these times is considerably smaller than the width of a chip and, thus, the arriving signals are not separately distinguishable in the same manner as are multipaths described above.
Given the development of transmit antenna diversity schemes, two types of signal communication techniques have evolved to improve data recognition at the receiver given the transmit antenna diversity, namely, closed loop transmit diversity and open loop transmit diversity. Both closed loop transmit diversity and open loop transmit diversity have been implemented in various forms, but in all events the difference between the two schemes may be stated with respect to feedback. Specifically, a closed loop transmit diversity system includes a feedback communication channel while an open loop transmit diversity system does not. More particularly for the case of the closed loop transmit diversity system, a receiver receives a communication from a transmitter and then determines one or more values, or estimates, of the channel effect imposed on the received communication. The receiver then communicates (i.e., feeds back) one or more representations of the channel effect to the transmitter, so the transmitter may then modify future communication(s) in response to the channel effect. For purposes of the present document, the feedback values are referred to as beamformer coefficients in that they aid the transmitter in forming its communication “beam” to a user station.
With the advancement of CDMA and WCDMA there has been a comparable development of corresponding standards. For instance, a considerable standard that has developed, and which continues to evolve, in connection with WCDMA is the 3rd Generation partnership Project (“3GPP”) for wireless communications, and it is also reflected in 3GPP 2 systems. Under 3GPP, closed loop antenna diversity for WCDMA must be supported, and in the past 3GPP set forth a closed loop operational method that alternates between three different communication modes. The choice of a mode at a given time is dictated by the Doppler fading rate of a particular user station receiver; in other words, since user stations are likely to be mobile, then due to the mobility as well as other factors there is likely to be an amount of Doppler fading in the signals received by such a user station from a base station and this fading affects the choice of a closed loop mode. In addition to the different fading rates giving rise to the selection of one of the three prior art modes of operation, each mode differs in certain respects. One difference is based on how the beamformer coefficients are quantized by the user station, and other differences also apply to different ones of the modes. Such differences are detailed later. In any event, note here by way of background that generally there is a tradeoff among the three modes, where greater resolution in the feedback information, and hence a greater level of beamformer control, is achieved at the expense of increased feedback and processing delay.
The preceding three modes have proven to achieve a considerable level of performance as measurable in various manners, such as BER, FER, or SNR; however, the present inventors also have identified various drawbacks with the overall three mode approach. For example, a certain level of complexity is required to implement the necessary algorithm to switch between the three different modes in response to changes in Doppler fading. As another example, an alternative approach may be implemented using one mode which provides results that match or outperform the results achieved by the prior art modes 1 and 2 across the Doppler frequencies for which those prior art modes are used. Still other benefits may be ascertainable by one skilled in the art given a further understanding of the preferred embodiments, as should be accomplished from the detailed description provided below.